Weighted grades

Question

Hi! We use groups of assignments with specific weights for grading. Recently my Director instructed me to EX some of the assignments. No word on which ones. What happen if I EX all assignments of a specific group? For example, if there are 3 forum discussion with a weight of 20% and I EX all of them? What happen if only one of the forum is EX?

gnoack · Accepted Answer

Oh, I'm glad I asked as I was guessing it was local slang for extra credit at your institution. I'm laughing to myself because I've forgotten that tool even existed.

My understanding is that your final grade will be calculated based on whatever grades you have.  So if you only have one grade in that category because all of the others are excused, that single grade will be used to determine the percentage of the final grade for that category. For example, if you have one discussion and the student gets 8 out of 10, the weight in your instance would be .80x.20, which would mean it is .16 of the final grade.

If you excuse all of the assignments, I believe Canvas will just ignore that weighted group and calculate the final grade based on the other groups.

Do you have access to your institutions beta or test sites?  Most schools do, but perhaps you haven't been told about it.  If so, you can go to that site and change some of the grades to see how the final grade is affected.

How do I access the Canvas beta environment as an instructor?

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-access-the-Canvas-beta-environment-as-an-instructor/ta-p/727

Ron_Bowman · Accepted Answer

@WilfredoD

What @gnoack has stated is what happens.  in the case as he stated, if an assignment group has not graded work that is counted (whether there is no work or all work is excused), then that group is not used in the final grade calculation.  So if a group with no graded work is worth 20% of the final grade, then the final grade is based on the other 80% of the weighted groups - that is the course grade is based on x/80 instead of x/100 where x is the amount of points a student earns for each of the weighted groups